Tag: Werewolf

August, that long awaited Shrewsbury meet, a whole six weeks have elapsed since last we gathered and the enthusiasm has not faded, nay it has grown. Although it’s notable that with the encroaching term-time, and so many of you retreating back to university our numbers have taken a small blow, so too will our growth from month-to-month subside for a while. Still, there is ever more to look forward to.

August, that long awaited Shrewsbury meet, a whole six weeks have elapsed since last we gathered and the enthusiasm has not faded, nay it has grown. Although it’s notable that with the encroaching term-time, and so many of you retreating back to university our numbers have taken a small blow, so too will our growth from month-to-month subside for a while. Still, there is ever more to look forward to.

This month’s theme was Tengen Toppa GeekOut Lagann, which will make very little sense to those not at least vaguely into their anime. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is a ridiculously over the top anime about robots fighting moons and smashing together to make walking boat-swords. You can see the appeal. Our mechs will not be fighting anyone with boat-swords…

GROWL makes an incredibly bold claim, saying “We designed a better werewolf card game for you and your clan!” When I saw this tagline, I honestly couldn’t help but click onto the product and have a look. What I saw appears to be a simple, quick game of Werewolf with some interesting differences. From pure discussion and deception to a card game, is GROWL all bark and no bite? I decided to put my money where my mouth was, as I’ve ordered myself a copy of GROWL – And here’s why.

GROWL makes an incredibly bold claim, saying “We designed a better werewolf card game for you and your clan!” When I saw this tagline, I honestly couldn’t help but click onto the product and have a look. What I saw appears to be a simple, quick game of Werewolf with some interesting differences. From pure discussion and deception to a card game, is GROWL all bark and no bite? I decided to put my money where my mouth was, as I’ve ordered myself a copy of GROWL – And here’s why.

Let it be known that I do not cosplay often… read “ever”, so even my low-energy effort as the “Quest Giving NPC” still took some work but it’s not easy to carve a question mark out of styrofoam, get it painted yellow and affixed to a headband securely enough in between all the writing and full-time-job-having. It didn’t quite work out as planned, and five minutes after settling into Sweet and the quest marker was in three useless pieces. I took my frustrations out on Murray’s Magic deck and an oversized milkshake.

When it comes to horror a new king has come to seize the crown, and though the recumbent cinema may still be giving us a few greats, not doubt video games are the heir apparent. But given the renaissance era of board games has produced wonders that even have the power to put chess to shame one wonders, can board games give us that same sense of horror? Can they make us dread, feel closed in, alone, or hopeless?

Perhaps.

A board game should be possible to win of course, giving us that glimmer of hope, however unlikely. Bound to rules and numbers we must still attribute cold and comprehensible numbers to inexplicable and alien horrors. Not to mention the fact that it’s harder to create a grisly spectacle on a piece of cardboard, no matter how well printed, but there are some areas in which board games excel. Continue reading “Can Board Games Be Scary?”

I’ve raised Penny Dreadful as an example once or twice, but what am I going on about here?

More than one film, book or television series has brought together the mythologies of gothic horror masterpieces of Victorian England with varying degrees of success. Werewolves and vampires are easily pitched against one another, and when the matter of life versus death, humanity versus primality are put to work invariably the works of Victor Frankenstein and Henry Jekyll are rarely far behind. Demons, witches, and a smattering of magicks and lores from colonial America and Africa blend to make an interesting take on the dark, bloody and profoundly philosophical imaginations of some of the era’s best remembered authors. Continue reading “Review – Penny Dreadful”

Here at GeekOut, we really love getting together with friends and fellow geeks in a social environment; be it in a pub, or over at each others houses. But when we’re there, we don’t just sit down and immediately start talking about life and current affairs, because that isn’t what we’re always interested in. Not to say those don’t have their place in conversation, but we need something to sink our teeth into, something to have as a compliment to our conversation.

In this week’s’ Top 10, we talk about some of our favourite examples of a board game that helps to drive conversation, giving you a vocal point – A common, shared theme, to which you can all discuss further, or just use as a way to say “Oi, remember that time you were really crap at that game? I remember it.” This is our Top 10 Social Board Games. Continue reading “Top 10 – Social Board Games”

The August meet has now come and gone for the Bristol geeks and I have to say, it was one hell of a turn out. We met a lot of new faces and there were plenty of regulars at the event too, some who hadn’t been to the meetup for a while and some who just never leaves (hi).

The August meet has now come and gone for the Bristol geeks and I have to say, it was one hell of a turn out. We met a lot of new faces and there were plenty of regulars at the event too, some who hadn’t been to the meetup for a while and some who just never leaves (hi).

We started proceedings by going to the Commercial Rooms. One thing we found out was that the Commercial Rooms were unwilling to reserve a table, which was crazy considering the number of us going… However we still all managed to go there. Eight people had signed up for food on the meetup, but it ended up being around twelve of us at the Commercial Rooms for food around 3pm. That was obviously just the start of the night…

Throughout the night, plenty of new people came into the group and a lot of GeekOut “veterans” were there too. In total, we must have had about 30-32 people, which was about what I was expecting from Meetup and Facebook event likes. It was a superb and fun night, filled with a lot of banter and a lot of interesting people. We got to make some cool new friends and I hope people come back again!

Oh my poor sign :(! It got all crumpled when it kept falling to the floor :P

The start of the book swap… Not the best picture in the world, but…

Who gets this reference?

Cards Against Humanity makes another popular return!

Fluxx next to some explosive kittens!

I’M PAC-MAN! Congrats to Andy Wade who won with a score of 12,800!

These are instructions on how to defuse a bomb. 2 out of about 8 pages!!!

Virtual Reality Bomb Defusal squad ASSEMBLE!

We introduced the Book Share as a new feature of this months activities and I’d like to think that it went pretty well. Through out the night, people were picking up books. Someone got their hands on 3 new books to read through, which was lovely! I’m certain some people have borrowed some of the books/manga I took in too. We had a sheet, a really simple sheet in fact which looks like these “Book Swap Pages” (It’s a .odt document, an open document for word processors). The “To borrow” list was 3/4 full!!! Incredible!

We had our Pac-Man competition, the winner of whom was one of our newcomers, Andy Wade. To everyone who gave it a go, many thanks! Hope you all enjoyed having a little game of Pac-Man to share!

Onwards until the next GeekOut Bristol Meetup, which is on Friday 11th September. Now to think what new activities to include in the next geek meet… Hmm… Any suggestions? Were you at this event? Let us know in the comments below, or over on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks everyone for turning up!